1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally concerned with automatic loading and/or offloading of a machine of any kind including at least one processing station to which objects to be processed must be presented one by one.
It is more particularly, but not necessarily exclusively, directed to the situation in which the machine is a printing machine, for example a silkscreen printing machine.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With an eye on productivity, machines of this kind are frequently serviced by at least one conveyor.
There are usually two conveyors, a feed conveyor on the upstream side of the processing station and an evacuation conveyor on the downstream side of the station.
A loading and/or offloading device is also provided for automatically transferring an object to be processed from the feed conveyor to the processing station, for automatic loading of the processing station, and/or transferring a processed object from the processing station to the evacuation conveyor, for automatic offloading of the processing station.
The loading and/or off loading device used in this case therefore comprises at least one transfer member adapted to pick up an object.
The present invention is more particularly directed to the situation in which a transfer member of the above kind has two jaws for holding the object, namely a fixed jaw and a jaw that is mobile relative to the fixed one and which, during an operating cycle of the machine, is alternately closed to pick up an object by cooperating with the fixed jaw to grip the object and opened to release the object.
From one production run to another the objects to be processed may have different configurations and it is important for the transfer member to be easily and quickly adapted to suit the objects without risk of damaging them.
A first object of the invention is an arrangement that satisfies this requirement in a very simple and effective manner.